When the Battered Streets are Bleeding
by Diamroyal
Summary: There's always a receipt for everything in life, there's a record, somewhere...even if it's only in your head. Post EW. Mature, violent content.


I'm posting this now, because I wanna make sure that I have the right audience for when the story itself gets posted...this is a teaser, nothing more, nothing less, and I have quite a bit written up, so forewarned is forearmed...: grins : on another note, I've been liking the reactions I've gotten from various sources already. This hasn't been betaed, so all mistakes are my own!

School was, thankfully, as boring as I wanted it to be. The last thing I needed was another upheaval in this poor, dilapidated thing I called my life.

I didn't even bother opening my book in whatever math class it was. Sure, I'd do the homework, and some of it I might actually come up against a wall on, because, although I may have done more high level mathematics in one year than many mathematics professors...they weren't everything covered in these books. They were all one track, maybe with two edges, but that was it. Simple, easy for me to wrap my head around, because they were something I'd done, over, and over, and over again. Until, all you had to really do was give me the numbers, and I was like a human calculator. I'd come across so many of the exact same problems that I knew the answers.

Like the girl doing check out at the mall. If you go and hang out at one of the stores during Christmas, I guarantee that she'll be saying quite a few of the totals before it's up on her screen. Because, although there may be very open possibilities, and a multitude of different possible answers...she's been behind that counter enough that she knows them, she's seen them enough. So yeah, I could pilot a trajectory of a missile on the fly, not so much because I had the ability to do that math in my head...but for the more simple task of memorizations. Just as possible on her register as on my suit.

The book would get read, the problems done, in all their stretched out glory, consuming space, and I'd get the perfect score in this class that had almost been pre-ordained. And I'd move on.

Once upon a time, I thought there'd be bells in school. I smiled as I shoved my text and notebook into my abused bag. During the war, there were. Now, no bells. And the wall clock was almost three minutes off. But who could care, or even really notice three minutes but me? Or the nerdy girl in the corner who never talked to anyone, had severe acne, and had a very scary looking, overstuffed bag. She might notice.

I could feel a bitter smile, one in the long series, now. That girl in the corner would probably never cross my path, just occupy her little space, and move on, much as I was, only, a little slower. But she was the only one not speaking to anyone else, and she didn't look depressed. So I, being me, and having been trained by years and experience, would watch her until her paths could never intersect mine. Protection? Or paranoia...

Mr. Rick was waiting for me just outside of Robinson Hall. Son of a bitch. I came to a stop by the doorway, and looked at him. He had some set of appropriately "cool" sun-glasses on for his age group. Suitably young, and not too young. I hadn't done any checks yet, to see why he'd need such middle-aged hip glasses, but I don't think they were specially for this trip, 'cause the sun was barely out, and the dreariness of the sky wasn't something that you needed shading against. But hey, to each his own.

I came to a halt there, and looked at him. "I don't suppose you're going to be leaving any time soon? So it's no use to tell you to go away?"

He shook his head a me, ignoring my comments but for that. "You've been home two days, and you're back in classes?"

Feeling nearly defensive, I hunched my book bag a little higher, and began to walk towards a table in the little quad, where one math building met another. I set my stuff down, and straddled the bench, knowing that he'd be right across from me in a few seconds.

He chose a different tact, though. "How's school going?"

I shrugged. "Boring. But it needs to be done."

He looked at me through his sunglasses. "You're in some fairly advanced classes to be bored in."

I snorted. "Obviously, they didn't give you the full dossier on me, did they?" I shook my head. "This, to me, is not advanced." I met his eyes. "I had to know more physics, more math, more chemistry—that's my high point—and anyone in OZ." I paused. "If I were to steal a technology from their top scientists, I had to know how to apply it with minimal outside help." I gestured at the building I'd just left. "I used calculations they don't teach two levels higher than this to pilot my suit, and I can do them in my head, with large amounts of physical and mental damage."

He took his shades off to look at me more seriously. "So why didn't you test out of these classes? You could have, apparently."

My bark of laughter made a few students walking around us to glance up at me. "That's missing the point." I leaned back to look up into the sky. It was between one and two pm, which meant that L2 was about forty five degrees south on the horizon from me. I wouldn't be able to see it right now, but I knew where it was. I gave up straining my eyes and looked back at my uncle. "I've never known normal, ya' know. I've known the worst of humanity. Not war, but the parts that are even worse than war. The things that don't go away with the peace treaty, or the combining of two powers." I grinned at him. "Normal, to me, sounds pretty damned nice."

He looked puzzled. "Then why won't you come home with us? We're about as normal as you could get."

I shook my head again. "Normal for you. Not for me. Normal for me means being the best. I can't be the best from where you come from, I have to start where I'm at. Surrounded by the best, the bravest, the most intelligent. Do you know what the average IQ is of the five of us? Less than two points away from any of us. And perhaps we aren't the absolute smartest people out there, but we have the best out of all the worlds. We're the best physically. That is certain." My stare turned into a glare. "Of all the people in the war, no one understands what we were, what we did. What we faced. Look back at the tapes. See whatever Lady will show you. We were five soldiers, and we took on two armies, and did it without support or emotional backing. And we won."

The man sighed. "So now you have a superiority complex? Is that what the war means to you? The right to not do anything but what you want?"

I wanted to kill him. But I counted to ten, and looked back into his eyes. "No. The war means a lot to me. It means revenge. Death. Victory. _Good_. And there is no one who can order me, or any of us. The only ones who did and could are dead. They died saving the Earth from earth's own foolishness." I stood up, done with this conversation, and pulled my bag onto my shoulder. "There's this old saying. 'Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes.' Learn about it."

When I was about two to three feet away from him, my shoulders hunched into the sunlight, he said something that made me stop. "How am I supposed to learn anything about you when you won't tell us anything?"

It was as I stood there that I realized he was, in fact, right. In part. He'd need to know more than I'd wanted to tell anybody, to leave me alone. I could pull out everything for him, and he'd either scream for bloody murder, or he'd get up, and walk away.

But I couldn't do it here. Two seconds, and I was back in front of him, shading him from the sun. "Come with me."

With a nod, he stood up, and I lead us through the campus up to the library. It was a stately old building, with enormous double doors into the courtyard. We went past the circulation desk, and the reference desk, up the grand staircase, and then up the narrow one. All the way at the top were research rooms, checked out to grad students. I wasn't one, but they were never all assigned, just in case a quick conference were needed, or something.

Both of us were silent, but he gasped a little when I promptly picked a lock on one of the vacant ones. There was only one chair, but I didn't mind. I sat down on the little desk, legs pulled up under me, relaxed against the wall. The chair didn't squeak at all, and that was good. Such a little noise would be a horrible distraction.

I measured the room with my eyes, and looked at him square on, though where I was, I sat a little taller.

"I had a cell this size once."

He looked inquisitive—the whole start of this mess. "You were in prison?"

I laughed. "Several times, but the time I'm talking about, was the longest." I looked up at the ceiling, mentally measuring again. "Although, I think it was a little bigger." The carpet was a wonderful color. Nice blues, swirly. "It was a solitary cell. Total sense dep."

"What do you mean?" Ah, he was going to do the leading questions thing. That was good. It might keep me talking, or get me to the point where I wouldn't stop.

"Total sense depravation. No sound. No light. Nothing textured but the walls, and they were smooth plasti-glass. Not even cold, but flesh-temp. I was there for a year, or so." I didn't look up, but I wanted to. "According to new calculations, I was nearly ten when I went in."

"Why?" He sounded horrified. That was good. We weren't even there, yet.

Looking up through my hair, I went on. "Have you ever heard of the Maxwell Church Massacre?"

"Yes."

"Well, it was somewhat of an incendiary type of explosion. When I came back, there were all of the other orphans, and the father, and the nun…cooked. Some charred, yes, but mostly they were just cooked." I laughed, and saw him shiver. "When the authorities came—and don't forget, they were the ones to do the cleansing in the first place—I was in the process of carving up the roasts, and presenting them." If I stared at the wall hard enough, I could see the perfect presentation it had made. "The communal dishes were still on the alter. I used grass and some small branches from the nearby park for the garnish." Now I met his eyes. "It just took them a year to figure out that I hadn't done it, because, after all…the government couldn't have done that to its people." I smiled. "Just like the plague. They needed to blame somebody. Eventually, they just decided I was a victim, and, despite the fact that I'd beaten several of them to a bloody pulp, they let me go."

He was swallowing audibly. I could almost see the salivary glands in his mouth going as he tried not to vomit.

"It smells just like beef, you know." I shrugged. "Actually, I didn't know that until I came to Earth. Fish are easier to grow in the colonies."

Just as he was beginning to retch, I gave him the wastebasket, rather glad that it wasn't a wire mesh one. I didn't think that he'd enjoy the finer points of my presentation of the dishes. Yes, it /is/ possible to make about fifty people vomit nearly simultaneously. And it really reeks. They hadn't liked the selection I'd garnered for them. A bit of Emily there—she still had a nice marble from the baby fat—perhaps a slice or two from John. He didn't really have a lot of meat on his bones, being so skinny. No, I don't think this man would like that part.

That was the part that never ended up in the media. The neighbors didn't come out of their houses, thinking they were next, so the only witnesses were the military. They weren't necessary to hush. None of it ended up in the report, but for the fact that there was one survivor, and the government had him in custody. Nice neat words, for their not quite so neat deed.

When he was done, head hunched down into his shoulders, I told him where the bathrooms were, and, digging around in my bag, was able to give him a bottle of water. He nodded, weakly, and went out, wastebasket in hand. I stayed there, waiting.


End file.
